23 Weeks

Today I'm at 23 weeks. I'm still feeling pretty good-no complaints. I haven't worn maternity clothes yet, although I know it's coming soon-I'm having a problem with shirts being long enough now and my pants have been held up with the rubber band trick for awhile now. Most maternity stuff is still a little big on me, but in the next few weeks I'm sure I'll make the transition. I think I've popped again this week-I had a few patients at work finally say something so I know I must be showing now. It amazes me how people make comments just assuming you're pregnant. Instead of asking, they just say "so when are you due?" It makes me want to play along like I'm not pregnant just to see the reaction on their face! I just would never have the nerve to say something like that to someone just in case they really aren't pregnant. I'll never understand people I guess! Here are my pics from today:

Welcome Baby Connor!

My girlfriend, Jessica, gave birth to her first baby yesterday-it's a boy!! You may remember I went to her shower last month. Her due date was either 2/15 or 2/20-the ultrasound said one date, and based on her last cycle was the other date. She had emailed me over the weekend a few times telling me no progress but that she had a doctor's appt. scheduled for Monday. Well, Monday around 4pm I got a text message from her that she was in the hospital and baby was on his way. I didn't end up hearing from her again until Tuesday around 11am! Apparently she had a c-section around 3am. I still have to get the details, as she wasn't scheduled to have a c-section. But anyways, Connor Spencer was born around 3am weighing in at 7lbs 3oz and 20" long! Here is a pic that she sent out today:

Welcome to the world little guy and congrats to Jessica and Kevin! I can't wait to meet him-hopefully next weekend!!

We Have Walls!

Ladies and Gentlemen, I'm happy to announce that we have walls in our back room :) You may remember our demolition from last week which took things down to the bare bones. Well, last week they worked pretty much all week on the new drywall-ceiling, walls, and mudding and taping the seams. It took them all week to get it close to being done. Today (and tomorrow) they'll be finishing the mudding and sanding of the drywall, then they can put up the molding soon after that. Here are some pics of the progress:
Ceiling showing recessed light:Ceiling drywalled:Facing the driveway:Facing the backyard:
Mudding and taping of drywall:Jerri checking things out:Facing the neighbors (notice the one window is gone):Facing the front of the house:Ceiling:New electrical wiring:
Still a work in progress, but at least it's progress! Oh, and people have asked how it is living in this-we're not really. We moved as much out of that room as possible into our front living room. We brought down a TV from our bedroom and put that in our front room also. So, instead of living in this room, we're living up front, which we never do. It's very cramped because of the added furniture/clutter from the back, but we're getting along ok. I can't wait to clean the house though-it's a filty mess from them tracking stuff through the house. It'll be nice to be back to normal in a few weeks!

Baby Registry

Gabe and I went to register for the baby yesterday. We decided to register at Babies R Us and it went pretty well. I was partially excited about it and partially dreading it-mainly because I remember how long our wedding one took us to do. But I did save us some time and got some very helpful tips from a book called Baby Bargains. My sister-in-law, Molly, recommended it to me so I bought it a few months ago. Let me tell you, it's very helpful. They review every major purchase you'll make (mattresses, cribs, dressers, car seats, etc) and give you their recommendations, or the best bang for your buck. They get their reviews from parents who use the stuff every day-thousands of them email the book company and that's how they come up with their recommendations. Anyways, it definitely was a time saver-I book marked a few pages in the book and in the back they have a sample registry that basically gives their top choice for each product. We basically picked out most things based on what they said. And I have some wonderful friends and family who gave their input as well. We ended up being there about 2 hours-not too bad I guess. I've been adding a few things online here and there as well-but I'm finding their website to be very unuser-friendly. Seriously, do I need to click on 10 subcategories just to look at cups? There has to be an easier way! But I'm glad the chore is done, or mostly done at this point!!

7 Months!

Today we've been married 7 months! I normally would put a picture up to honor the day, but my CD of wedding photos is buried in our house rubble somewhere. And frankly, I'm too lazy to look for it and dig it out! We're creeping in on our one year anniversary-it's funny to think at this time last year I was counting the days until the wedding and now it seems to be going so fast-sometimes you just want life to slow down!

My Car is Back!

Gabe noticed at least 6months ago that the hood of my car was a little messed up-the paint was bubbling off of part of the hood-not good! When I went for an oil change at the dealership, I showed it to the guy. He said it looked suspicious, but of course the manager needed to look at it-and he wasn't there that day. I tried stopping by there 2 other times and the manager wasn't there either of those times either. So I went for my car inspection last week and made sure he was going to be there that day. He checked out the hood and said there was a definite problem with it-most likely rusting or something wrong when it was manufactured. The good news? It was covered by warranty. The better news? They were replacing the entire hood! Not just buffing it out and repainting it, but taking the whole thing off and giving me a new one. Apparently they've never seen anything like this so they were going to send my hood to Toyota to have it analyzed! I dropped my car off on Monday and have had a loaner car since-they just happened to give me another Prius-newer model but very basic. After a few days, I missed my car. They called today to say my car was done so I went and picked it up-looks brand spankin' new! And I'm glad to have my own car back :)

Holy Demolition Batman!

We recently had a new project started in our house. In the back of the house we had a family room (many, many years ago it used to be a garage) and it's been something Gabe has been wanting to change since he moved in almost 8 years ago. So, last Monday, the guy we found started the demolition of the room!

Here are some pics of the room before:

Facing our backyard: Facing the neighbors (moving counter-clockwise around the room from above):

Facing the front of the house:Facing the front of the house/driveway:Ceiling:

These pics are after day 1 of demolition. Above our drop ceiling was another ceiling that had some recessed lights in it. Here the insulation is still in as well. These pics mirror the above ones, starting facing the rear of the house and moving counter-clockwise.

Facing the backyard:

Facing the neighbors:Facing the front of the houseFacing the front of the house:Facing the driveway:

These next photos are what the house looked like after Friday (5 days of demolition). The second ceiling was removed, and all new insulation was put in both in the ceiling and walls. All of the old insulation was completely removed and replaced, new electrial wires were ran, and some recessed lights were put in.
Facing our backyard:Facing the neighbors:Facing the front of the house:What was a closet:Facing the driveway:Today, they started putting up the drywall in the ceiling and part of the walls-we didn't take any pictures of it yet. I'll keep posting as the project progresses-they said about 2-3 weeks of work time. One week down, maybe 2 more to go!

21 Weeks

Here are my 21 week pics! No new updates since I just updated about the ultrasound the other day-things are going well!

Nursery Progress

So we started on the nursery back in the beginning of December-picking out paint colors, etc. We knew it would take us awhile to get everything done that we wanted to in there, so we started extra early to make sure it would be ready for baby's arrival. Before, the room was just a spare room-we had a bed in there (which we ended up selling) and a dresser I had from my Mom's house and some of Jerri's stuff was in there too. Here are some before pics (we had painted one wall to see what the color looked like):

facing rear of the house-closet on the left:view from the bedroom door:

Opposite view from above:

first wall painted:So far, we have all of the walls and ceiling painted. Gabe also rented a sander and sanded the floors to refinish them. He also tore down all of the baseboard, trim, and doors in the room to have them stripped. We bought the stain to stain everything, but haven't done that yet. We're having a guy come to do some work on the lighting in the room so we're waiting until he finishes that to stain and seal everything. Here are the current nursery pics:

walls and ceiling done, baseboard removed:

facing rear of house (closet on left):Ceiling before (painted but old lighting):view of the door, test strip of new stain on floor:floors sanded, test strip of stain:close up of floor-sanded on left, new stain on right:floors again, Jerri checking things out:I'll be posting more pics as we progress with the room-the new lighting is in as of now, but it's not sanded, painted, etc. yet. Once we get more updated things in place, I'll post more photos!

20 Week Appt/Ultrasound

So today I had my 20week appointment and ultrasound. My appointment went well-they are pretty quick and easy so nothing really new there-just a weight check, urine check, blood pressure, hear the heartbeat. That's about it. But so far so good with that! I met the last of the 3 doctors yesterday and they all seem very nice so I'm happy about that.

Gabe met me later in the day for my ultrasound (most likely my last one). We told the tech we didn't want to know the baby's sex so she avoided the area. It was very cool-she showed us the arms, legs, spine, heart, brain, umbilical cord, hands, feet and face. We had them record it on a DVD for us so that's nice to have. The cool thing was that you could see baby moving around this time-we saw the mouth open and close and you could see it moving its hands and feet around. It was very cool. Gabe asked her at the end if she knew the baby's sex and she said she was pretty sure she did. So apparently Gabe and I are no good at deciphering ultrasounds!!

My next appt. is in 5 weeks (one week late due to our trip to FL) and I also have my one hour glucose test that day as well.

Buffalo Recap

We went to Buffalo over the weekend for a visit. Friday night, Gabe and I celebrated Valentine's Day a little early. We went to Left Bank for dinner-our fave Buffalo restaurant and also where our first date was. It was fabulous as always!

Yesterday Gabe ran some errands and I went to Target to look around a bit. Then we went to Jacobi's for dinner with my Mom. We go here pretty frequently and the funny thing is, no one is EVER there! Some bar patrons, but never anyone there to eat. And the food is really good too! We usually get a bunch of things and share-this time we had a large pizza, chicken fingers, fries and a small salad-all very yummy. After dinner, Gabe and I met Megan and Todd at the movies-we went to see "Taken"-it was a really good movie. We haven't been to the movies in close to a year so it was nice to go out and see one for once, even though the prices are getting ridiculous. After the movie, we all went to TGIFriday's-the guys had some drinks and the two preggo ladies had ice cream sundaes!

Today we relaxed this morning then met my Dad at Olive Garden for lunch-another place I haven't been in years. I just had the unlimited soup and salad combo they do-it was good-I ate way too much! Then we headed home and here we are just relaxing a bit. I'll probably run to Wegman's (woo hoo) and hang out the rest of the night gearing up for work tomorrow.

Whoa....Halfway There

(Whoa, living on a prayer)

Sorry-had to throw that good ol' Bon Jovi in there! So today I'm officially halfway through my pregnancy-20 weeks! It's hard to believe it's halfway over already. I have my next appointment on Tuesday and also my ultrasound Tuesday as well. It would be the one where we find out the baby's sex, but we're not going to find out-we're going to have it be a surprise. But it'll be nice to see the little munchkin again! I've been feeling baby move daily now-a little bit every day which is neat. I'm still wearing normal clothes at this point, but am doing the unbuttoning of the pants for most things-in a matter of a week most of my stuff went from fitting fine to no-way-in-heck am I buttoning those! It's funny how that happens. Maternity pants are still too big on me though so I'm in that in between stage at this point. I'll update more after my appts on Tues!

First Stranger Comment...sort of

So I got my first stranger comment today-but I'm not really counting it. The reason is that the woman who said it sees me every week in class at the gym. I've never talked to her (so she is a stranger) but I've seen her there every week for at least a year-probably a lot longer than that. So today before my class she came up to me and said "When are you due? How far along are you?" I told her I was just about halfway through and due in June. She said "I saw you in class Saturday and noticed you didn't do the ab workout so I wondered if something was up. But I really can't tell unless I really look at you. You look fantastic!" From then it turned into "is this your first, what are you having, etc". I guess it'll really hit when a complete stranger who doesn't see me regularly says something to me. After I was thinking to myself "what if I wasn't pregnant and just injured myself or something? How could you jump to the conclusion that I'm pregnant?" Then I remember that some people just say what's on their mind, right or not. I bet she would have felt like a jerk if I said "Due? I'm not pregnant!" Haha!

Ah the weekend....

Why do weekends go by so darn fast?! Friday we didn't do much-I went to the gym after work then we went to Wegman's to do our grocery shopping-we figured this weekend it would be a zoo with people Superbowl shopping so we got it done early which is nice. Yesterday I went to the gym in the morning. After that we went to my friend Julie's house and hung out with her, her hubby Richie and their daughter, Carly. It was nice to see them and hang out for awhile-we ordered some food for takeout and they gave us lots of good baby advice! And Carly is so darn cute-she'll be 1 at the end of February and is just a doll! When we got home from there, my Mom was here for a visit. We went to my sister-in-law's house to see them and the kids for a bit then we went to Orien's for a bite to eat. I mentioned this place before and it's a great place. This time, we tried some of their food as well. I had a salad with almonds and cranberries on it-it was very good, but small for the price I thought. My Mom had a chicken salad sandwich which was incredible! Next time I'm definitely getting that! We all had some gelato of course-Mom and Gabe both had Sette Veile which was a chocolate and hazelnut concoction and I had Biscotto Oreo which basically tasted like oreos and was very yummy! When we got home we watched the movie "88 Minutes" which was really good. My Mom left today around noon and we've been doing some cleaning and stuff around the house. Tonight is the Superbowl so all of the in-laws are coming over. We're making homemade pizzas and some snacks-it should be a good time! Then back to work tomorrow :(